| Muslims what do you think about this story?

Muslims what do you think about this story?

Lena Rose asked:


NY Times October 24, 2001

Beaten in Pakistan, Battered in Brooklyn
SOMINI SENGUPTA

Haider Rizvi, a freelance journalist and native of Pakistan, has
spent much of the last six weeks talking to cabdrivers, deli workers
and other New Yorkers who have been picked on, yelled at and
roughed up because, to untrained eyes, they resemble the
terrorists who struck the World Trade Center. Late last month, he
wrote an article about such bias for a South Asian news service.

Early Sunday morning, on a Park Slope street corner not far from
his home, Mr. Rizvi, 38, found himself in the middle of such a
story.

As he stepped out of a Pakistani- owned grocery on Fifth Avenue,
three men approached him. “One of them looked at me and said:
`You look like Osama bin Laden. Are you from Pakistan?’ ” he
recalled yesterday. “I said, `Originally, yes.’ ”

Mr. Rizvi said he remembers being kicked and punched, falling to
the sidewalk and waking up at New York Methodist Hospital. His
assailant had knocked out one of his front teeth and beaten him
unconscious.

The police are investigating the incident as a possible bias crime.

There is a peculiar sense of déjà vu to Mr. Rizvi’s story. The last
time he was roughed up he was a college student in Pakistan; his
assailants were thugs belonging to the Jamaat-i Islami, the pro-
Taliban fundamentalist political party, whose members have been
on the streets of Pakistan in recent weeks protesting the bombing
of Afghanistan. In fact, Mr. Rizvi said yesterday, he left Pakistan in
part because he was tired of being harassed by the Islamic right.

A couple of weeks ago, the editor of an Indian newsmagazine wrote
to ask him to write a personal essay about being a Muslim in
America. He wrote back with this suggestion: “I asked if she’d like
to read a piece about what it’s like to be an atheist living in the
United States.”

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Comments

3 Responses to “Muslims what do you think about this story?”

  1. Lost and Found Stewie Style on May 10th, 2009 7:40 am

    I see terry g is confusing cultural ignorance with Islam again.

    As for your story I think its horrible and appalling.

    Id feel very frustrated if I was in his place for sure.

  2. raymond on May 11th, 2009 2:37 pm

    these things happen what can i do?

  3. DonJuan on May 12th, 2009 7:30 pm

    Terry,
    If the Bible said don’t kill, but a so-called Christian killed, what would that do to Christianity? Nothing.

    Islam is not what some Muslims do.

    Small minds talk about people
    Average minds talk about events
    Great minds talk about ideas

    If you have misconceptions about Islam, refer to its sources (Quran and prophetic HADITH), not the actions of thugs who happen to be Muslims

    Peace